


In which Mac is an uncoordinated baby deer

by chrundletheokay



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, but it could be whenever really!, canon typical dennis douchebaggery, probs pre-Mac and Dennis Break Up imho (in my homosexual opinion), sick fic trope tbh, when does this take place? u decide!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 06:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17523257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrundletheokay/pseuds/chrundletheokay
Summary: (He's not; it's a metaphor. Really, it's just a sick fic, because we love our tropes.)Let's not pretend that Dennis would immediately go completely sófte just because Mac has a little cold: “Baby boy, you know I love you, but if you get your nasty snot on me or my clean sheets, I’ll have you sent to the glue factory, I swear. I have no qualms about it.”So Dennis is still a bit of a bastard man, but he's convinced he's great at this whole care-taking thing.





	In which Mac is an uncoordinated baby deer

**Author's Note:**

> [CW: canon-typical stuff, nothing too serious/dark/intense imho. but this includes a mention of childhood neglect, plus references to Dennis's unhealthy attitudes/judgements toward food. and Dennis being an asshole.]

“Did you find everything alright?” the cashier asks, as Dennis dumps an armful of items onto the checkout counter.

Ubiquitous — and, therefore, obnoxious — as this transaction opener is, Dennis typically ignores it. Today, however, is not a typical day.

“You didn’t have his orange juice,” he informs the cashier.

She stops straightening up the many packages scattered before her. “Pardon me?”

Dennis shrugs. “He’s stupidly particular about his orange juice, considering he’s drinking it from concentrate, but what can you do? Anyway, you didn’t have the right one. But I suppose this one will have to do.” Nose scrunched up in distaste, Dennis nudges the Very Wrong bottle of orange juice closer to her.

Even as he does this, he sees the conversation that will inevitably unfold when he returns home: Mac, complaining that “this one tastes weird,” and “I like the other one.”

Mac started coming down with a cold a few days prior. Although he was able to drag his way through the first few days of work, coughing and sniffling and sneezing all the while, he woke up this morning truly disgusting. One look at him (after listening to his disgusting sickly noises all night) was enough for Dennis to call in sick for the both of them. Someone has to take care of Mac, after all — to listen to him whine and keep him from getting into trouble. So basically the usual, but ten times worse and infinitely more disgusting because Mac is sick.

The air fills with beep after electronic beep as the cashier scans and bags an assortment of over-the-counter medicines. “Sick kid at home, I take it?”

“Might as well be,” Dennis mutters.

The cashier snorts hideously and scans Mac’s cookies.

“Before I left, I had to convince him not to turn our bathroom into a sauna, if you can believe that.”

She regards him with one eyebrow quirked up in mild amusement. “Wow, that’s… um, _creative_ , I guess.”

“It’s stupid, is what it is,” he corrects her. And, because she seems like a reasonable enough young woman, he decides to let her in on A Secret. “Now, if it were me, I would simply command the sickness to leave my body at once.”

The cashier stops scanning and looks up at him skeptically. “ _Oh_ ,” she says. And nothing more.

“Oh, yes. I would simply say, _SICKNESS, BY THE POWER OF THE GOLDEN GOD, I COMPEL YOU TO LEAVE THIS FLESH PRISON!_ ’”

“Mommy, why is that strange man yelling?”

Dennis quickly locates the source of the squeaky voice: a small girl standing in front of a nearby candy display, gazing at him with wide eyes. Her mother hushes her, and — ignoring the child’s protests — pulls her by the hand out the sliding glass doors.

“But I didn’t get my candy,” whines the girl just before the doors slide closed.

Dennis rolls his eyes. Children and their candy. It’s a good thing that the child’s mother knows better than to hand it over any time she demands it, or she’ll be fat in no time.

Not his problem, though. He turns back to the cashier. “I apologize for that. You have to be very loud when you’re doing it, but trust me — it works. Mac just doesn’t have it in him, because he’s always outsourced these things to the Catholic Church.”

“Right,” the cashier says faintly.

“I sense that you doubt me, but—“

“Oh, no, it’s cool! I get it. _Totally_.” She nods and laughs quietly, but it sounds fake, like she’s simply trying to placate him. Her eyes dart around the store as if she’s looking for backup, which is absurd because there isn’t even a line for the register.

In a slightly shaking voice, the cashier reads out Dennis’s total, which is absurdly high. That’s when he gets it — like so many of those ugly feminist types, she’s unreasonably afraid of men. Perhaps his fatal mistake was this: yelling about the Golden God doesn’t work unless you’ve already introduced yourself as the Golden God.

As such, he has more pressing matters at hand than this store’s blatant price gouging: chiefly, getting out of here before the cashier or any bystanders convince a police dispatcher that a mentally ill man is shouting in the pharmacy.

Once that is accomplished, he needs to deliver these exorbitantly overpriced products to Mac, before the man in question smears his diseased mucus all over their leather sofa.

It is only 11am, and Dennis is ready for the day to be over.

After paying and successfully leaving the store without any police interaction, Dennis punches on the radio in the Range Rover. The end of an ad fades out, before the opening beats of “Never Gonna Give You Up” play loudly over his speakers. He lets out a sigh of relief, and peels out of the parking lot.

 

—

 

When Dennis arrives back at home, the living room is empty and the shower is running. He chucks the shopping bags full of supplies onto the now vacant sofa.

“Are you _kidding_ me, dude?” he exclaims.

Of course, there’s no answer, because Mac can’t hear him from in the shower. So he stalks over to the bathroom, pounds on the heavy wooden door, and calls out louder. “Mac, what are you doing, bro? We talked about this.”

“Yeah, I don’t—” Mac’s warbling and watery voice is suddenly interrupted by a violent coughing fit. “I, um, I don’t think this is working.”

“No shit.”

Earlier that day, Mac had been struck by the genius idea that he could “smoke out” his fever by building a sweat lodge in their apartment and “sweating it out.” However, the closest thing to a sweat lodge he could think of was closing himself in their tiny bathroom and turning the shower water as hot as it would go. Before leaving to purchase proper, scientifically-backed, modern medicine (and orange-juice-from-concentrate, god help them), Dennis was sure he’d convinced Mac of how incredibly fucking stupid this idea was. And yet Mac is in there presently, no doubt making a mess of their bathroom.

“Get the fuck out, Mac. I got the medicine. And chicken noodle soup, and orange juice for Vitamin C, and those stupid cookies you like.”

“Nah, I’m tired. Think I’m just gonna live in here.”

“No, you’re not gonna—Just ‘cause water’s included in the rent, doesn’t mean—You can’t just _live_ in the—That’s not gonna work, Mac. C’mon, man.”

“No, I think I’m good.”

Dennis leans forward to thunk his head against the closed door. He says a brief prayer for patience, but in way that is entirely secular and has nothing to do with Mac’s magical, invisible Daddy in the sky.

“Alright,” Dennis sighs after a moment of tense contemplation. “I’m coming in. Are you decent in there?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure? Because I didn’t buy any bleach while I was out, so if I see anything—”

“I’m not naked, okay? Whatever, _jeeze_. Either come in, or leave me alone, but don’t make this weird, bro.”

“All I’m saying is ‘What has been seen cannot be unseen,’ buddy.”

“Not like you haven’t already seen it all,” Mac mutters. It’s just barely audible through the door, but Dennis pretends not to have heard it, because he refuses to acknowledge that particular reality at present.

When he cracks open the door, he is blasted in the face by a metric fuckton of steam. “Jesus Christ,” Dennis exclaims. “It’s like a fuckin’ sauna in here.”

“Yeah, that’s the _idea_ , Dennis. But it’s not helping! I’m still sick, except now I’m just really wet. Plus, everything’s super heavy.”

“Heavy? What the hell are you—” He yanks back the shower curtain to find Mac sitting on the floor of the shower, wrapped in the fuzzy blanket he’d been curled up with before Dennis left for the store. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mac.”

“What? I wanted to be sure I got extra warm and sweaty,” Mac says defensively. “And more layers means being more warmer!”

“Get out. Now. Dry off. _Jesus Christ._ I’ll bring you dry clothes. You goddamn lunatic.”

Mac positively whines. “Don’t be mean; I’m sick, bro.”

“You’re like a baby, Mac, I swear. I left you alone for five minutes, man.” He storms out in search of dry clothes.

Mac calls after him, voice desperate and pathetic, “It was, like, an _hour_ , Dennis! I thought I was gonna die here, all by myself.”

Once again, Mac’s bedroom appears to have been struck by a freak indoor tornado that has left everything strewn across the floor. This isn’t unusual. What _is_ unusual are the empty dresser drawers. The only clothes Dennis sees are the ones on the floor, which he assumes is Mac’s version of a laundry hamper.

“Dude, where are all your clothes?”

A prolonged and abashed-sounding “ _ummm”_ is Mac’s only answer.

Until Dennis trudges back into the bathroom, that is, and Mac drops the blanket to the shower floor with a loud, wet _SPLAT_. Without it there to hide his body, Mac looks incredibly large and lumpy.

Because Mac, as it turns out, had somehow managed to layer on his person a truly absurd number of t-shirts, sweatshirts, pants, and sweatpants, before throwing the blanket over it all. It takes considerable effort and, regrettably, teamwork to pull it all off, seeing as everything is drenched. It’s no wonder Mac’s dresser is entirely bereft of clothes.

“Fuckin’ idiot, I swear,” Dennis mutters to himself as he abandons all hope of finding clean clothes in Mac’s bedroom. He turns instead to his own drawers for something that might fit Mac.

 

—

 

Once he’s ensured that Mac is dry and dressed and warm, and out of trouble on the sofa, Dennis gathers all the soggy items from the bathroom.

“I’m gonna throw all this shit in the dryer, man. Although… when was the last time you even washed this blanket? Might as well do that while I’m at it.“

All sprawled out and groggy-looking on the sofa, Mac stares at him blankly. “Why would I wash the blanket? It’s not like I’m _wearing_ it.”

In his shock and revulsion, Dennis nearly drops the sodden bundle on the living room floor. “Dude. Are you _kidding_ me.”

“What? No. Why?”

“Are you telling me you don’t wash your bedding?”  


“I mean, sometimes. Like, if it gets really gross or whatever. Why, do you?”

“Yes, because I’m not a goddamn savage,” Dennis exclaims. “When was the last time you washed your sheets?”

Mac stares up thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Hmmm, I dunno. When was the last time I had a chick over?”

He can’t place it exactly, but it’s definitely been a long while, for reasons he doesn’t like to examine too closely in the daylight, reasons that make him desperately hope Mac washed the goddamn sheets afterward. If not, he may need a good place to hide a body.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” he says at last. “That’s disgusting. You washed them… _after_ that, right? It was after?”

“Yeah, of course. Why would I wash them _before_ if they’re just gonna get all gross again?”

Dennis rolls his eyes. “Well, I suppose that’s _some_ consolation. But… god, it’s no wonder you’re sick; you’ve been lying in your own filth for…“ He’s refuses to say the number of months out loud, because that would mean admitting that this thing between them has gone on longer than either of them had intended or expected.

As ever, Mac is oblivious and incapable of subtlety. “Nah, dude,” he says brightly, “I’ve mostly been sleeping in your bed. So that makes it your filth, and your fault that I’m sick.”

“I change my sheets at least once a week!”

Mac sits bolt upright, his mouth hanging open. “What? Dennis, that’s crazy! How do you have time for anything else if you’re just constantly washing your sheets?”

“It really doesn’t take that long. But also? I own more than one set of sheets, so what you do is—You know what? It doesn’t matter. I swear, I can feel those sheets in there, getting dirtier and dirtier by the second.”

“You’re gonna wash my sheets for me, aren’t you?”

“I am, and you know what? You owe me, dude, I swear to god.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Mac mumbles, before burrowing back into the sofa, this time without a blanket, thanks to his own stupidity.

When Dennis finally locates the jar of quarters — returned to the wrong place _again_ — it’s missing a significant amount of money. “Goddamnit. Has Charlie been stealing our laundry quarters again?”

“Um. Yeah, I think so. He gave me a huge tiger sticker the other day, you know, like the ones he’s always getting from the gum ball machines. But it was holographic, so I didn’t say anything.”

 

—

 

Upon returning from the slightly ominous basement with its flickering lights and exposed pipes, Dennis discovers Mac curled up on Dennis’s bed. In spite of how sickly he looks, with his red nose and otherwise pale face, he appears relaxed and uncharacteristically calm. If it weren’t for that — and only that, because Dennis has certainly not gone soft — he would kick Mac out with no remorse.

Instead, he crawls into bed and sits next to Mac, barely offering a single complaint as Mac shifts around to rest his head on Dennis’ lap.

“Baby boy, you know I love you, but if you get your nasty snot on me or my clean sheets, I’ll have you sent to the glue factory, I swear. I have no qualms about it.”

Mac rolls over and looks up with watery eyes. “You know, they don’t even make glue out of horses anymore,” he mumbles. “Charlie had me write to the glue company. He dictated a letter to me. Something about a guy called… I dunno, Percy Nincompoop or something. Anyway, they sent back a form letter saying there aren’t any horses in the glue anymore.”

Dennis brushes the hair off Mac’s slightly damp forehead. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing you’re not a horse, then, huh? They might still take you.”

“You’re mean,” Mac whines, sounding not unlike the petulant child who was denied candy in the pharmacy earlier.

“Hey, I got you your cookies, didn’t I?”

“That’s true…”

“And your soup, and all the medicines and shit. You shoulda seen the cashier lady; she probably thought I was crazy or something. Actually—” He laughs quietly and scratches lightly at Mac’s scalp, pleased that, if nothing else, the ill-fated sauna attempt had washed out all the hair gel “—she asked if I had a sick kid at home.”

“Hmmmm.” Mac curls closer. “People should mind their own business.”

“I know, right?”

Mac sneezes directly onto Dennis’s jeans.

“Gross, dude.” He screws up his face in disgust and shoves a handful of tissues at Mac.

“Sorry.” His already-red nose honks wetly into the tissues. “Hey, aren’t you worried about getting sick?”

“Nah, don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a cold. Besides, if I were to notice myself developing any symptoms, I’d squash that shit down immediately.”

“How? Like, Vitamin C or something? ‘Cause I tried that—”

“Drank an entire quart of my orange juice, buddy, I know.”

“Yeah, and it didn’t work. So what’s your plan, then?”

“As I’ve said before, I would simply look the disease straight in the face, as it were. And I would say, very firmly and insistently, _SICKNESS, LEAVE THIS CORPOREAL FORM AT ONCE! THE GOLDEN GOD COMMANDS YOU_ ,” Dennis bellows.

Mac whimpers and clamps his hands down over his ears as Dennis demonstrates this highly effective — and, most importantly, non-religious — medical exorcism.

“Don’t be loud; I’m sick,” Mac groans.

Dennis clears his throat. “Well, anyway. That’s how I’d do it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He pats Mac firmly on the shoulder. “Now you wait here. I’m gonna put everything in the dryer.”

He shuffles out from under Mac and scoots off of the bed, watching for a minute as Mac squirms around and makes himself comfortable again. There’s an unfamiliar yet pleasant feeling of tightness in his chest that he can’t identify, but knows is Mac's fault .

Mac blinks wearily up at him. “Hmmm?”

“Nothing. Just…” He shakes his head, hoping to dislodge the warm, fluttering feeling in his chest; maybe he’s coming down with Mac’s cold. “Seriously, stay right there. I don’t wanna get back here and find you in the goddamn ‘sauna’ again.”

“Too tired,” Mac mutters, and flops over face-first into the bed.

 

—

 

“If you spill any of this on my bed, I’ll be forced to murder you,” Dennis intones as he shoves a tray full of Sick People Food (plus cookies) onto Mac’s lap.

Mac stares at the tray with wide eyes. “How come you’re being so nice to me?”

“Because I’m a nice person,” Dennis says sternly. “Now hush, and eat your soup.”

For the first time in recent memory, Mac goes quiet, save for the disgusting slurping of his soup and loud gulps of orange juice, which he blessedly does not complain about; perhaps he’s too congested to taste that it’s the “wrong” brand.

As he’s scraping out the bottom of the bowl, Mac looks up with a frown. “Did I ever tell you about that time I got the flu in middle school?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” A minute of worrying silence follows as Mac picks up a cookie and examines it, turning it over in his hands quiet contemplation. “It kinda sucked. My dad was locked up, and my mom was working at the Jiffy Lube, so she was busy and too tired from work to help take care of me. So she, like, kinda told me to suck it up and stop being a little bitch about it?” Mac shrugs and bites into the cookie. “It’s cool, though,” he concludes, through a mouthful of cookie crumbs.

Dennis blinks rapidly as he tries to process the story. It sounds accurate, but he doesn’t know how to respond. His face, however, must communicate something Mac doesn’t like, because he catches a brief flash of panic in Mac’s eyes.

“Dude, she was only saying that because I was the man of the house,” Mac protests loudly, “so I should’ve been able to look after myself. Plus, someone had to take care things while my mom was working. Like, she didn’t have time to go grocery shopping or anything, so all we had to eat was like… mustard and cigarettes and stuff like that.”

“ _Dude_. Mac. You can’t eat cigarettes.”

“You know what I mean,” Mac whines around another mouthful of the cookie.

Dennis closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths, fighting the urge to scream at Mac for being so goddamn delusional about his parents. This isn’t the first time he’s had the urge to explain the meaning of the word “neglect,” but it’s definitely not the _appropriate_ time to give in to that urge.

“Anyway, Ms Kelly sent Charlie over with chicken noodle soup for me, but he got distracted on the way over and fed it to a stray dog.” With a shrug, Mac shoves the last cookie into his mouth whole.

Dennis rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“When you and Dee used to get sick, did your mom—”

“Nah, she always farmed us out to Josefina. We weren’t allowed to go near her, ‘cause she didn’t want to catch whatever we had.”

Mac furrows his eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth turn down slightly. “Oh,” he says quietly.

His reaction feels unbearably like pity, which is the last thing Dennis wants from him, or from anyone else with a childhood as blatantly pathetic as Mac's was. Looking down his nose at Mac, Dennis sniffs, “It’s very practical, you know. Kids get sick a lot.”

“Nah, dude, it’s actually kinda sad.”

“No, it’s not,” Dennis insists with a glare. “If anyone’s story is sad, it’s yours. Now hush, the fever is clearly making you delirious.”

“I’m not delirious, dude!”

“Yes, you are. Now wait here, I’m gonna get the laundry.”

 

—

 

Dennis returns from the cool, clammy basement with the laundry basket balanced on his hip like an old-timey maiden. It’s crazy how productive he feels — he ran an errand for Mac, fed him, got him to drink the shitty orange juice without complaint, and did Mac’s laundry. He’s a total bad-ass at this care-taking thing. What would Mac do without him?

Upon reentering his bedroom, the answer to that question is revealed to be: _hunker down in the fetal position with his face burrowed into Dennis’s pillow._

“You cold again, baby boy?”

“Mmm-hmmm. Think I’m gonna die,” Mac mumbles into the pillow.

“Oh, bullshit. You absolutely are not.” Dennis throws the laundry basket to the floor and, from the pile within it, yanks out Mac’s blanket. “Look, I have something for you.”

When Mac peeks up hopefully, Dennis shows off the clean blanket with a grin. He climbs back onto the bed and wraps Mac up tight in the hot, fresh-out-of-the-dryer blanket. Mac whimpers and shivers as Dennis tucks him in, warm and snug.

The whimpering turns to incessant sniffling, which, Dennis realizes with a jolt of terror, is crying. He should’ve anticipated this; after all, Mac hinted at it earlier with his whimpering and his whining and his _why are you being so nice to me?_ Nevertheless, Mac’s over-the-top reaction throws him off guard, sending his heart flip-flopping and somersaulting uncomfortably inside his chest.

He ignores the feeling, and slides down next to Mac, pulling him close against his chest, blanket and all. In spite of his previous warnings about snot and diseases and glue factories, he even lets Mac sniffle and cry and sob onto his shoulder like a goddamn baby.

“I’m sorry,” Mac gasps over and over again, until Dennis hushes him.

At times like these, Mac reminds him of that scene in _Bambi_  where the baby deer is taking his first steps. The little deer — just as uncoordinated as Dee — trips over his own spindly legs, and goes tumbling head over heels (or is it “head over hooves?”) like an idiot.

That’s how Mac can be with affection: an awkward, pathetic creature with no life experience, tripping over himself as he tries to get his bearings with the new sensation of being cared for. It’s unseemly in a man of his age, but there’s nothing to do about it — except, perhaps, to give it time, try for patience, and secretly plot revenge against Luther and Ms Mac. After all, as far as Dennis is concerned, this problem is entirely of their own creation; because as much as Mac denies it, they never gave a shit about him, much less loved him.

So he runs his fingers through Mac’s fluffy soft hair, all askew from lying on it earlier, and he murmurs far-too-soft bullshit he will surely regret saying later.

Dennis is mentally constructing a third possible scheme to avenge Mac by the time the crying peters out. Shortly thereafter, Mac falls asleep in his arms, and begins snuffling quietly in his sleep.

 

—

 

When Dennis opens his eyes again, the sun has set and his bedroom is dark, save for the faint yellow glow of streetlights filtering through his closed blinds. His nose is congested, and the back of his throat is dry and sore. There’s an odd noise coming from beside him, which, upon inspection, turns out to be Mac sleeping with his mouth hanging open.

“Mac,” he hisses.

Mac twitches slightly in his sleep, but his breathing remains even and his facial expression appears blank, relaxed, and undisturbed.

Since Mac is sick, Dennis probably should let him rest. And he would, he really would, but this is _urgent_.

“ _Mac,_ ” he tries again louder, as he pushes at the other man’s shoulder.

Finally, Mac begins to stir and opens his eyes with a grumble. “What?” he groans. “Dennis, I’m _sleeping_.”

“Dude, I think I’m—” Dennis pauses for a brief second, and before he can stop himself, sneezes directly into Mac’s face.

“Oh, _gross_ , dude!” Mac wipes his damp face off onto the blanket.

More than slightly humiliated, and with his pride wounded more than ever before in his life, Dennis exclaims, “Don’t be mean, you asshole! I’m sick!”

**Author's Note:**

> In both my tags and summary on here, I kept writing "sic fic." That is something else entirely, but I'm not sure what. An editor's field day, I imagine.
> 
> "sick fic," aka "sic [sic] fic." Or is it "sic fic" [sic]? Hah. Get it? It's a bad editing joke. Random useless fact: I looked it up, and Wikipedia tells me the full phrase, in Latin, is "sic erat scriptum," or "thus was it written."
> 
> ANYWAY. I started this fic about a month ago. I want to get better about posting fics without editing them about a dozen times and sitting on them for months and months... even though the last/only time I did that, it did not go over so well. But posting something new and (hopefully) better is the only way to move past that, so here we are! It's been edited multiple times, but I'm sure there's still room for me to improve and learn. Regardless, I hope this makes someone besides me laugh, or even just smile a little. If not, I still had fun!


End file.
